Looks like a fucking great audio-visual experience
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Thursday, June 14, 2007
2nd National Harm Reduction Therapy Conference : November 2-4, 2007
Association for Harm Reduction Therapy Presents:
2nd National Harm Reduction Therapy Conference
Harm Reduction Therapy in the Real World
November 2-4, 2007
Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine
Philadelphia, PA, USA
Presentations by: Ethan Nadelman, Allan Clear, Maia Szalavitz, Philadelphia Youth Health Empowerment Project.
Half Day Workshops that will teach you have to do Harm Reduction Therapy (HRT) in many different settings and with many different groups of clients.
Preliminary Program:
Therapeutic Alliance in HRT (Andrew Tatarsky)
Beyond Zero Tolerance (Chuck Ries)
Sidewalk Therapy (Lydia Fleck/Michelle Stocknoff)
B.A.S.I.C.S. for College Students (George Parks)
Making Mandated Treatment Work (Barbara Wallace)
Addiction Medicine and Psychiatry (Sarz Maxwell/Raj Parekh)
HRT Drop-in Groups (Jeannie Little)
Relapse Prevention as Harm Reduction (Alan Marlatt)
HRT as an Integrated Treatment Model (Patt Denning/Raj Parekh)
Moderation Management (Frederick Rotgers/Ana Kosok)
HRT in Needle Exchange Programs (Perri Franskoviak/Nicole Avallone)
Transference, Countertransference and Therapeutic Neutrolity (Jeannie Little/Deborah Rothschild)
Working in School Systems (Eric Wagner)
HRT with Families (Patt Denning/Maureen Murdock)
Motivatation in HRT (Jeff Foote)
Bioethics and HRT (Frederick Rotgers)
Registration Opens July, 2007.
For more information please visit our website :
HYPERLINK "http://www.associationforharmreductiontherapy.net" www.associationforharmreductiontherapy.net
Or Contact: Frederick Rotgers, PsyD, ABPP
HYPERLINK "mailto:fredro@pcom.edu" fredro@pcom.edu
2nd National Harm Reduction Therapy Conference
Harm Reduction Therapy in the Real World
November 2-4, 2007
Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine
Philadelphia, PA, USA
Presentations by: Ethan Nadelman, Allan Clear, Maia Szalavitz, Philadelphia Youth Health Empowerment Project.
Half Day Workshops that will teach you have to do Harm Reduction Therapy (HRT) in many different settings and with many different groups of clients.
Preliminary Program:
Therapeutic Alliance in HRT (Andrew Tatarsky)
Beyond Zero Tolerance (Chuck Ries)
Sidewalk Therapy (Lydia Fleck/Michelle Stocknoff)
B.A.S.I.C.S. for College Students (George Parks)
Making Mandated Treatment Work (Barbara Wallace)
Addiction Medicine and Psychiatry (Sarz Maxwell/Raj Parekh)
HRT Drop-in Groups (Jeannie Little)
Relapse Prevention as Harm Reduction (Alan Marlatt)
HRT as an Integrated Treatment Model (Patt Denning/Raj Parekh)
Moderation Management (Frederick Rotgers/Ana Kosok)
HRT in Needle Exchange Programs (Perri Franskoviak/Nicole Avallone)
Transference, Countertransference and Therapeutic Neutrolity (Jeannie Little/Deborah Rothschild)
Working in School Systems (Eric Wagner)
HRT with Families (Patt Denning/Maureen Murdock)
Motivatation in HRT (Jeff Foote)
Bioethics and HRT (Frederick Rotgers)
Registration Opens July, 2007.
For more information please visit our website :
HYPERLINK "http://www.associationforharmreductiontherapy.net" www.associationforharmreductiontherapy.net
Or Contact: Frederick Rotgers, PsyD, ABPP
HYPERLINK "mailto:fredro@pcom.edu" fredro@pcom.edu
Psychedelic Trance Festivals as a space of cognitive liberty
A unfinished inner reverie...
Much beyond the actual prejudice of drugs in rave parties, psychedelic open-air gathering offer a new creative space for human consciousness to unfold. People in differents states of consciousness find a common, universal medium for a literal mems soup. Under some circumstances, they provide an optimal set and setting for entheogenic experiences to arise is a positive manner, awakening the divine within, collectively.
The goal is to create a gigantic magnet or collectively Dissociated Trance Plane that will trigger a recurrent feedback loop of peace, love and feeling of unity. This so-called Karmageddon takes place at all level of organization (social, intellectual, cellular) and all surrounding molecules are caught in that vibration or flow. Collective creative play, based on any kind of psycho-sensori-motor interaction among participants, in the fashion of a cosmic karmic glass bead game of consciousness, generates emotional and spiritual resonances.
The tripbubble, or field consciousness, theory explains this quite well. Multiple individual ego (self/non-self distinction) boundaries collapse as the get into synchrony with each other. These tuned oscillators are coupled in a positive feedback loop, following an exponential rule similar the the propagation of fungus lifeforms for example. Thoughts, ideas, viewpoints, qualia emerge from this mental soup, potentially providing to each body a richer experiential flow than the sum of separated consciousness activities. There is no theoritical limit to this acceleration, except that body and mind have to grow side by side so as to avoid burning of kundalini that can have various noxious effects both on the personal and transpersonal level.
Music becomes the orchestra conductor of consciousness into transpersonnal realms of reality. This fits well with recent theories in neural computing, oscillatory dynamics govern all organization level of life and matter. It also integrates recent approaches of consciousness as something which is not restricted to the body and even modern neuroscience starts studying the interaction of two individual consciousnesses with brain imaging techniques.
A striking example is the one of monks that gather for ritual prayer or meditation, they metaphorically all tune to the same frequency (sensori-motor acting as a carrier wave for consciousness) and co-create the same reality. They experience a pool of pure mems without any communication wrapping being necessary between them. In this golden silence, words are useless ego-toys, loving compassion becomes the engine of all action.
Much beyond the actual prejudice of drugs in rave parties, psychedelic open-air gathering offer a new creative space for human consciousness to unfold. People in differents states of consciousness find a common, universal medium for a literal mems soup. Under some circumstances, they provide an optimal set and setting for entheogenic experiences to arise is a positive manner, awakening the divine within, collectively.
The goal is to create a gigantic magnet or collectively Dissociated Trance Plane that will trigger a recurrent feedback loop of peace, love and feeling of unity. This so-called Karmageddon takes place at all level of organization (social, intellectual, cellular) and all surrounding molecules are caught in that vibration or flow. Collective creative play, based on any kind of psycho-sensori-motor interaction among participants, in the fashion of a cosmic karmic glass bead game of consciousness, generates emotional and spiritual resonances.
The tripbubble, or field consciousness, theory explains this quite well. Multiple individual ego (self/non-self distinction) boundaries collapse as the get into synchrony with each other. These tuned oscillators are coupled in a positive feedback loop, following an exponential rule similar the the propagation of fungus lifeforms for example. Thoughts, ideas, viewpoints, qualia emerge from this mental soup, potentially providing to each body a richer experiential flow than the sum of separated consciousness activities. There is no theoritical limit to this acceleration, except that body and mind have to grow side by side so as to avoid burning of kundalini that can have various noxious effects both on the personal and transpersonal level.
Music becomes the orchestra conductor of consciousness into transpersonnal realms of reality. This fits well with recent theories in neural computing, oscillatory dynamics govern all organization level of life and matter. It also integrates recent approaches of consciousness as something which is not restricted to the body and even modern neuroscience starts studying the interaction of two individual consciousnesses with brain imaging techniques.
A striking example is the one of monks that gather for ritual prayer or meditation, they metaphorically all tune to the same frequency (sensori-motor acting as a carrier wave for consciousness) and co-create the same reality. They experience a pool of pure mems without any communication wrapping being necessary between them. In this golden silence, words are useless ego-toys, loving compassion becomes the engine of all action.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Monday, June 11, 2007
Current theory on hallucinogen : small population of rhythmic neurons getting hyper-excited by special activation of 5HT2A receptors by psychedelics
Bill Connelly in the maps forum provides a very nice review of recent work on hallucinogens :
There's been a lot of (well deserved) coverage of the recent renaissance in the clinical study of hallucinogens, but quietly, the physiological/pharmacological study of hallucinogens, has also been advancing.
(When I say hallucinogens, I mean, in this context, LSD/mescaline like compounds, i.e. chemicals which activate the subclass of serotonin receptors known as 5-HT2A receptors).
Three papers spring to mind, published in the some of the most influential science journals, including Science, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS).
It has been known for a long time that hallucinogens increased excitation in the brain, and specifically in the cortex, that is to say, that the connections between neurons (synapses) became more active in the presence of hallucinogens, and the kind of synapses that became active were the type that made neurons more likely to fire action potentials and signal to other neurons. These synapses belong to neurons which are being activated by the hallucinogens, but where to these neurons reside? As brain cells are capable of making connections from one end of the brain to the other, it could be anywhere. The likely hypothesis was a region of the brain called the thalamus. This is the main relay in the brain for most sensory and all motor connections, and on top of that, reciprocal connections between the cortex and the thalamus are believed to underpin consciousness in the round. Modulating signalling through the thalamus could explain the powerful effects hallucinogens have on perception and thought. However, in a paper published in Science, (the best or second best Science journal in the world)a multidisciplinary team, including G. Aghajanian from Yale University,using genetic manipulation of mice, so that they only expressed 5-HT2A receptors in the cortex, and no where else, showed that these mice were received the enhanced excitation caused by stimulating the 5-HT2A receptor; showing that the hallucinogen induced excitation in the cortex by directly activating cortical neurons.
Another paper published in Neuron (the second ranked pure neuroscience journal) revealed several other interesting results. A chemical known as Lisuride activates the 5-HT2A receptor, however in humans, it does not produce hallucinations. This has been paradox in hallucinogen research for some time. This paper revealed that Lisuride, though a 5-HT2A receptor agonist, activates genes in a completely different pattern than 6 hallucinogens studied (DOI, DOM, DOB, LSD, Mescaline and psilocin), and these 6 hallucinogens produced a very similar pattern as each other . Indeed, Lisuride was unable to induce any of the changes in neuronal excitability that LSD could, and was able to block that LSD induced changes. This indicates that Lisuride activates the 5-HT2A receptor, but in a fashion completely different to hallucinogens. Also they showed that selective restoration of 5-HT2A receptor function in the cortex, allowed these mice to show the same hallucinogen-induced behaviours noted in normal mice (head twitch); further indicating that 5-HT2A receptors in the cortex mediated the behavioural manifestations of hallucinogens.
Finally a recent (May 29th) publication in PNAS showed once and for all the source of the hallucinogen-induced excitation. It was demonstrated that the increase in excitation is caused by a small population of neurons which are highly sensitive to hallucinogens. These neurons begin firing constant action potentials in the presence of 5-HT2A receptor agonists. It is these neurons which the must synapse onto a large population of cortical neurons,which these cause the increase in synaptic function recorded previously.
These papers collectively tell us that that likely mechanism of hallucinogens is by causing a small population of cortical neurons to become hyper-excited, which then increases excitation in other neurons. What it does not tell us is what special properties these neurons have that allow them to produce such marked changes in human psychology (or whether they even exist in humans).
Cortical 5-HT2A receptor signaling modulates anxiety-like behaviors in mice.
Weisstaub NV, Zhou M, Lira A, Lambe E, González-Maeso J, Hornung JP, Sibille E, Underwood M, Itohara S, Dauer WT, Ansorge MS, Morelli E, Mann JJ, Toth M, Aghajanian G, Sealfon SC, Hen R, Gingrich JA.
Science. 2006 Jul 28;313(5786):536-40.
Mechanism of the 5-hydroxytryptamine 2A receptor-mediated facilitation of synaptic activity in prefrontal cortex.
Béïque JC, Imad M, Mladenovic L, Gingrich JA, Andrade R.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2007 Jun 5;104(23):9870-5.
Gonzalez-Maeso J, Weisstaub NV, Zhou M, Chan P, Ivic L, Ang R, Lira A,
Bradley-Moore M, Ge Y, Zhou Q, Sealfon SC, Gingrich JA.
Hallucinogens recruit specific cortical 5-HT(2A) receptor-mediated signaling
pathways to affect behavior.
Neuron. 2007 Feb 1;53(3):439-52.
--
Bill Connelly
Assistant Research Fellow
Department of Pharmacology
University of Otago
There's been a lot of (well deserved) coverage of the recent renaissance in the clinical study of hallucinogens, but quietly, the physiological/pharmacological study of hallucinogens, has also been advancing.
(When I say hallucinogens, I mean, in this context, LSD/mescaline like compounds, i.e. chemicals which activate the subclass of serotonin receptors known as 5-HT2A receptors).
Three papers spring to mind, published in the some of the most influential science journals, including Science, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS).
It has been known for a long time that hallucinogens increased excitation in the brain, and specifically in the cortex, that is to say, that the connections between neurons (synapses) became more active in the presence of hallucinogens, and the kind of synapses that became active were the type that made neurons more likely to fire action potentials and signal to other neurons. These synapses belong to neurons which are being activated by the hallucinogens, but where to these neurons reside? As brain cells are capable of making connections from one end of the brain to the other, it could be anywhere. The likely hypothesis was a region of the brain called the thalamus. This is the main relay in the brain for most sensory and all motor connections, and on top of that, reciprocal connections between the cortex and the thalamus are believed to underpin consciousness in the round. Modulating signalling through the thalamus could explain the powerful effects hallucinogens have on perception and thought. However, in a paper published in Science, (the best or second best Science journal in the world)a multidisciplinary team, including G. Aghajanian from Yale University,using genetic manipulation of mice, so that they only expressed 5-HT2A receptors in the cortex, and no where else, showed that these mice were received the enhanced excitation caused by stimulating the 5-HT2A receptor; showing that the hallucinogen induced excitation in the cortex by directly activating cortical neurons.
Another paper published in Neuron (the second ranked pure neuroscience journal) revealed several other interesting results. A chemical known as Lisuride activates the 5-HT2A receptor, however in humans, it does not produce hallucinations. This has been paradox in hallucinogen research for some time. This paper revealed that Lisuride, though a 5-HT2A receptor agonist, activates genes in a completely different pattern than 6 hallucinogens studied (DOI, DOM, DOB, LSD, Mescaline and psilocin), and these 6 hallucinogens produced a very similar pattern as each other . Indeed, Lisuride was unable to induce any of the changes in neuronal excitability that LSD could, and was able to block that LSD induced changes. This indicates that Lisuride activates the 5-HT2A receptor, but in a fashion completely different to hallucinogens. Also they showed that selective restoration of 5-HT2A receptor function in the cortex, allowed these mice to show the same hallucinogen-induced behaviours noted in normal mice (head twitch); further indicating that 5-HT2A receptors in the cortex mediated the behavioural manifestations of hallucinogens.
Finally a recent (May 29th) publication in PNAS showed once and for all the source of the hallucinogen-induced excitation. It was demonstrated that the increase in excitation is caused by a small population of neurons which are highly sensitive to hallucinogens. These neurons begin firing constant action potentials in the presence of 5-HT2A receptor agonists. It is these neurons which the must synapse onto a large population of cortical neurons,which these cause the increase in synaptic function recorded previously.
These papers collectively tell us that that likely mechanism of hallucinogens is by causing a small population of cortical neurons to become hyper-excited, which then increases excitation in other neurons. What it does not tell us is what special properties these neurons have that allow them to produce such marked changes in human psychology (or whether they even exist in humans).
Cortical 5-HT2A receptor signaling modulates anxiety-like behaviors in mice.
Weisstaub NV, Zhou M, Lira A, Lambe E, González-Maeso J, Hornung JP, Sibille E, Underwood M, Itohara S, Dauer WT, Ansorge MS, Morelli E, Mann JJ, Toth M, Aghajanian G, Sealfon SC, Hen R, Gingrich JA.
Science. 2006 Jul 28;313(5786):536-40.
Mechanism of the 5-hydroxytryptamine 2A receptor-mediated facilitation of synaptic activity in prefrontal cortex.
Béïque JC, Imad M, Mladenovic L, Gingrich JA, Andrade R.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2007 Jun 5;104(23):9870-5.
Gonzalez-Maeso J, Weisstaub NV, Zhou M, Chan P, Ivic L, Ang R, Lira A,
Bradley-Moore M, Ge Y, Zhou Q, Sealfon SC, Gingrich JA.
Hallucinogens recruit specific cortical 5-HT(2A) receptor-mediated signaling
pathways to affect behavior.
Neuron. 2007 Feb 1;53(3):439-52.
--
Bill Connelly
Assistant Research Fellow
Department of Pharmacology
University of Otago
Saturday, June 9, 2007
Psychedelics and Synpatic Plasticity
This goes in the direction of my thesis that psychedelics can induce temporary plasticity allowing for a neural remapping, thus allowing to go beyond stuck habits and prejudices.
Adapted from the Maps forum
--------------------------------------------------------------------
One interesting study analyzed LSD effects. It was found was that it stimulated expression in genes related to "synaptic plasticity" - that is, the brain's ability to rewire itself, metaphorically speaking - and genes related to memory consolidation. This suggests that LSD experiences do indeed encourage learning on very powerful and basic levels.
See the article here
Adapted from the Maps forum
--------------------------------------------------------------------
One interesting study analyzed LSD effects. It was found was that it stimulated expression in genes related to "synaptic plasticity" - that is, the brain's ability to rewire itself, metaphorically speaking - and genes related to memory consolidation. This suggests that LSD experiences do indeed encourage learning on very powerful and basic levels.
See the article here
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